Broadband data and video surfaces, on which our society and economy have grown to depend, have heretofore generally not been readily available to users on board mobile platforms such as aircraft, ships, trains, automobiles, etc. While the technology exists to deliver such services to all forms of mobile platforms, past solutions have been generally quite expensive, low data rate and/or available to only very limited markets of government/military users and some high-end maritime markets (i.e., cruise ships).
At present, a wide variety of data services can be provided via a satellite link from a ground-based radio frequency transceiver. Such data services may include conventional Internet services such as email, web browsing, net meeting, as well as virtual private networks (VPNS) for corporate and government customers.
One particular problem with establishing communication links between numbers of mobile platforms operating within a given coverage region, and a single base station, for example a ground-based RF transceiver, is the difficulty in quickly establishing communications links with each of the mobile platforms. For example, with commercial air traffic dozens of aircraft may be moving into and out of a given coverage region throughout any given time period. In this situation, it is critical that each aircraft be able to quickly establish a communications link with the base station within the coverage region which it is traversing without interfering with communication links already established with the base station by other aircraft. It is also important that the bandwidth assigned to any given aircraft can be modified to accommodate, as best as possible, the bandwidth demands of each aircraft to handle the volume of data content being transmitted from the aircraft back to the ground station.
It is also important that any such system as described above which is intended to facilitate a return communications link for a mobile platform, such as an aircraft, needs to be able to quickly deduce that the aircraft is not responding to a polling signal and then to reallocate the specific return channel to other aircraft which may be requesting additional bandwidth to handle increased data rate transmission needs.